A paper by economists Rafael Di Tella of Harvard and Ignacio Franceschelli of Northwestern shows a strong correlation between government advertising dollars and front-page newspaper coverage of corruption scandals, Joshua Benton reports for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

According to the study (PDF file), the authors analyzed four newspapers’ front pages, Clarín, La Nación, Página 12 and Ámbito Financiero (representing 74 percent of total domestic circulation) from 1998 – 2007. Their results showed that an increase of approximately $70,000 in state ad spending for a paper was related to an almost 50 percent drop in front page space used for corruption coverage.

Benton adds that the study shows correlation between spending and coverage - not causation, but Di Tella told him that the data indicates that papers react to government ads, not the other way around.